[840] The under gate, etc.: The word translated made fast (chiavare) may signify either to nail up or to lock. The commentators and chroniclers differ as to whether the door was locked, nailed, or built up. I would suggest that the lower part of the tower was occupied by a guard, and that the captives had not been used to hear the main door locked. Now, when they hear the great key creaking in the lock, they know that the tower is deserted.
[841] The four faces, etc.: Despairing like his own, or possibly that, wasted by famine, the faces of the young men had become liker than ever to Ugo’s own time-worn face.
[842] Famine, etc.: This line, quite without reason, has been held to mean that Ugo was driven by hunger to eat the flesh of his children. The meaning is, that poignant though his grief was it did not shorten his sufferings from famine.
[843] Where the Si, etc.: Italy, Si being the Italian for Yes. In his De Vulg. El., i. 8, Dante distinguishes the Latin languages—French, Italian, etc.—by their words of affirmation, and so terms Italian the language of Si. But Tuscany may here be meant, where, as a Tuscan commentator says, the Si is more sweetly pronounced than in any other part of Italy. In Canto xviii. 61 the Bolognese are distinguished as the people who say Sipa. If Pisa be taken as being specially the opprobrium of Tuscany the outburst against Genoa at the close of the Canto gains in distinctness and force.
[844] Gorgona and Capraia: Islands not far from the mouth of the Arno.
[845] That he betrayed, etc.: Dante seems here to throw doubt on the charge. At the height of her power Pisa was possessed of many hundreds of fortified stations in Italy and scattered over the Mediterranean coasts. The charge was one easy to make and difficult to refute. It seems hard on Ugo that he should get the benefit of the doubt only after he has been, for poetical ends, buried raging in Cocytus.
[846] Modern Thebes: As Thebes was to the race of Cadmus, so was Pisa to that of Ugolino.
[847] Another crew: They are in Ptolomæa, the third division of the circle, and that assigned to those treacherous to their friends, allies, or guests. Here only the faces of the shades are free of the ice.
[848] Is any vapour: Has the sun, so low down as this, any influence upon the temperature, producing vapours and wind? In Dante’s time wind was believed to be the exhalation of a vapour.
[849] To the bottom, etc.: Dante is going there in any case, and his promise is nothing but a quibble.